Saturday, February 8, 2014

Manga Art Class: Take 3

Posted by Arcadia Page at 4:06 PM

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you are no stranger to my many different efforts to teach what I’ve learned about creating manga to others.

My first try was by creating a group on Meetup.com. That worked for like, one class. Then I started creating a Skillshare course, but I have to confess that watching videos of myself is like watching a dog walk on it’s hind legs. So not natural. It was hard for me to edit them to a good quality, because I couldn’t handle watching the recordings of myself over and over.

Anyways, sometimes what you want happens without forcing things. A friend of mine is homeschooling her son, and he loves anime and manga. He has stories for mangas that he wants to create, but he has no idea where to start when it comes to creating one. So when he found out that I’ve published manga of my own, he wanted me to teach him how to draw so he could make them too.

Everyone starts here. BTW, I drew this.

Of course, I told him that I would love to teach him how to do that. Then he told his mom--my friend--and she agreed to hire me as his art tutor. But then, he told his friends about it, and his friends told their parents, and so on...

So getting to the point, now I’m going to be teaching a nice little manga art class every other week. Totally unexpected. ^_^

Since the kids are ages 10-15, I’ve created very fun, simple and flexible projects. I thought that it would be fun to post some of my lesson plans here. So those who want to sort of follow along with the class, totally can.

If you want to do what my students are doing, here’s where to start:

Materials needed

Sketchbook (make sure that the sketchbook has a plain cover. Students will be personalizing the covers of their sketch books. Sketchbooks with a spiral binding are the easiest to work with)
#2 pencils (Mechanical pencils are fine)
Transparent Ruler
Basic Drawing Made Amazingly Easy by Christopher Hart--This book won’t be used until the third class, and even then it’ll be used mainly for out of class assignments.

And that's all you need if you want to follow along. I’ll be posting the assignments for my first class Sunday the 16th.

If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to leave a comment!